In Colorado’s most recent numbers, marijuana tourism is seen as a growing motivator for trips to Colorado as 8 percent of the Colorado tourists who responded to the survey said they visited a dispensary. Pictured: Jack Randall of Little Rock, Ark., visits La Conte's Clone Bar & Dispensary during a My 420 Tours marijuana tour in Denver, Colo. in December 2014. (Denver Post file)

One of the world’s foremost travel authorities is preparing for a Green Rush of marijuana tourism.

Arthur Frommer has been writing about travel since the ’50s, and his name has become synonymous with international travel and tourism as his Frommer’s travel guides and Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel magazine have guided tourists through locales as exotic as Iceland and Peru.

“The prospects seem strong that marijuana is now about to be added to beer and wine as a permissible product to order,” Frommer writes. “This seems about to happen. Get ready for the era of marijuana — and marijuana tourism.”

Frommer’s article — Five More States Are About to Consider the Legalization of Marijuana, Creating the Basis for a Large New Industry of Marijuana Tourism — points out that marijuana tourism is already happening. It also references state tourism boards’ precarious relationship with the cannabis-centered tourism already heading their way.

“Why haven’t you heard from the tourist boards of Colorado, Oregon and Washington about the lure of marijuana?” Frommer asks. “It’s because they’re concerned about the propriety of attracting out-of-state visitors in that manner; on a federal basis, marijuana use is still illegal elsewhere in America. And thus, the states thus far permitting the drug are acting as if they are limiting its use to persons within their borders. Presumably, that hesitation will come to an end if several more states use the November 8 referendums to greatly expand marijuana’s use.”

In Colorado’s most recent tourism numbers, legal cannabis is seen as a growing motivator for trips to Colorado as 8 percent of the Colorado tourists who responded to the survey said they visited a marijuana dispensary. As we reported in December 2015: “While the state’s ‘Come to Life’ ad campaign is certainly successful, surveys in October and November of potential summertime visitors who were exposed to the state’s tourism ads revealed that the marijuana laws influenced vacation decisions nearly 49 percent of the time.”

Travel guru Frommer is clearly passionate about what he’s seeing as a bonafide new tourism sector: “We are on the brink of a major new travel movement.

“With as many as nine or 10 U.S. states or areas — the original several and the new five — permitting the once-forbidden use, we will undoubtedly witness a large, nationwide-marketing campaign, urging Americans to visit those states for the purpose of ‘relaxing.’ Arguments will be made that marijuana is no more addictive than beer or liquor; that it is as harmless as a standard cocktail; that it serves various other beneficial purposes as well. And tourism will undoubtedly be aided by the attraction of that new reason for traveling.”

Ricardo Baca is a contributing editor for The Cannabist. He was appointed The Denver Post's first marijuana editor in November 2013 and spearheaded the formation of The Cannabist, a division of the Post. Fortune magazine ranked Baca as one of the...